"What's up?" demanded Entwistle. "Failure of the gas works and the Company's electric light station?"
"Hanged if I know," declared Peter. "It strikes me very forcibly that we'll have to walk those seven miles. I suppose it means twelve for you? A taxi, or even a humble four-wheeler is an impossibility in this forsaken hole."
A man, stumbling across the rails in the darkness, clambered upon the platform within a yard of the two would-be passengers.
"Sorry, sir," he muttered apologetically.
"What's all this about?" enquired Entwistle. "Why have the lights gone out? Are there no more trains to-night?"
"No, sir, no more trains yet awhile," replied the porter, for such he was. "They've just got a warning through. Them swine of Zeps. is somewheres about."
CHAPTER IV
WHEN THE ZEPPELIN WAS OUT
"WE'LL have to foot it, man," declared Entwistle decidedly. "Unless we can get a car to pick us up on the road. Zeppelins, by smoke! Whoever would have thought it? I didn't; not this side of the Pennines."
"So I believe you said," replied Peter Barcroft, as the two men swung down the inclined approach to the station and gained the setts of the dingy street. "Still, they may be miles away. These official warnings are the pattern of eccentricity. You know the road?"